From a former teachers union employee: Embrace school choice
Education has always mattered to me. As a first-generation immigrant of a single mother who didn't graduate from high school, I know firsthand how difficult it is to escape poverty without an education. Before graduating with my master's degree, I decided that education was where I wanted to pursue a career, so I was excited when a teachers union hired me. I thought I had a real opportunity to help bring change to the education system.
This country does a disservice by not empowering educators to lead in their classrooms. I remember the countless conversations with my former colleagues about how to help teachers manage burnout, large classroom sizes, and professional development. We worked long and hard at finding ways to prevent teachers from leaving the profession within their first two years of employment. The system was awful.
It's challenging to make unhappy teachers happy with a system that fails them constantly. I left the job and found myself reflecting on why I left. Originally, I bought into the idea that I could bring change to the classroom and positively affect students and teachers, but the reality was that nothing ever changed.
Even after taxes brought in more revenue, teachers had to face salary freezes. The money never got to the classrooms. It wasn't entirely the union's fault — district mismanagement plays a big part. However, at the union, we fought for taxes in exchange for education improvements, which never became a reality, and we kept right on asking for more tax increases.
I became unmotivated and lost confidence in my purpose. Then, I found a new purpose and a passion for empowering families with additional high-quality educational options. Every day, I am motivated to fight for families who, like me, are searching for the American dream.
Unfortunately, public school teachers are still struggling, unappreciated, and leaving the profession, especially after the coronavirus pandemic. Worse, children in low-income areas are still sitting in overcrowded classrooms. And still, teachers unions believe that more money will fix the problem. They protect this failed system and the status quo while low-income children wait for desperately needed improvements.
I don't regret my experience working for the union and all that it taught me. I learned that the traditional educational system itself is broken. I understand and support the unions’ focus on teachers’ working conditions, learning opportunities, and success and happiness. However, they are wrong to try to accomplish this by protecting a system that blocks students from finding an education that meets their needs. If the unions’ focuses were more on teachers and the teaching profession, we would have fewer issues with incentivizing teachers to stay in the profession.
The polls show that school choice support is at an all-time high. The pandemic gave teachers unions across the country an opportunity to reevaluate how they do their business, but I don't see any changes yet.
School choice is not going away anytime soon. Instead of wasting resources fighting against education reforms that are widely supported, teachers unions should join the rest of the world by innovating and being responsive to parents.
Despite their boilerplate calls for change, the teacher unions have never supported school choice or forward-thinking innovation. So how long must poor children continue waiting until their zoned public schools get better? If the teachers unions are allowed to dictate the terms of educational progress in the country, we’ll be waiting a long time.
Valeria Gurr is a former Clark County School District teachers union employee and the current director of external relations with the American Federation for Children.